


In My Defense...

by 11dishwashers



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Royalty, Kidnapping, M/M, Mafia AU, mafia leader! johnny, prince! taeil
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-12
Updated: 2017-03-12
Packaged: 2018-10-03 17:32:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,143
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10253090
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/11dishwashers/pseuds/11dishwashers
Summary: Prince Taeil dreams of his captor, the mafia and a kingdom that does not love him.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * In response to a prompt by Anonymous in the [NCTprompts](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/NCTprompts) collection. 



> **Prompt:**
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> Crown prince taeil develops a Stockholm syndrome when the mafia leader seo youngho kidnaps him away from the royal palace in an operation against the royal family.
> 
> Dear prompter: thank you for giving me the chance to work with such a great prompt! I've never put so much effort into a story before, and well, I really am thankful ! Hope you like it <3 ! More to come !

I What he doesn’t tell the man with the sideparted hair, is that he can break the binds around his wrists. Easily, in fact, but people assume otherwise because of his pretty face and permanent seat on a blue velvet throne.

They think he’s bullet proof, and he’s just that when he’s brought out to the woods with a rifle in hand- it’s not his father’s. He wears a bulletproof vest.  _ Hillbillys are more likely to kill you,  _ his mother usually says, tucking his shirt into his jeans so you can’t see the black-painted enamel on his chest. He doesn’t particularily like hunting but hey, that’s life.

 

The man with the sideparted hair never asks if he can break free, so Taeil never tells. He’s not about to shout for the royal guards, and especially not when there’s a gun propped up to his temple.

“I  _ will  _ shoot,” the man says, emphasizing by pressing the cold steel against Taeil’s forehead hard. “So don’t struggle and don’t fucking try anything.”

The man is bluffing. Taeil knows that much- he knows the gun will be too loud, that someone will wake up and there goes the alarms. There goes Taeil’s brains too, his mother will have to get the ornate blue-yellow carpet washed specially. We wouldn’t want that.

So he practically skips next to this man, grin hidden behind a piece of fabric wrapped around his mouth. He knew leaving his window open would pay off. 

The man has these sneakers on, white laced, black trousers rolled up at the ends. He wouldn’t seem the type to kidnap a part of the royal monarchy if it weren’t for the leather jacket, stereotypically hanging off his broad shoulders, ‘ _ LOSTMYHEAD _ ’ written on the back in tipex. It’s kind of embarassing, really, how this man decided to wear shiny red/white shoes to a kidnapping. Taeil wants to ask for his name. It doesn’t happen like that.

“Stay fucking quiet,” says the man again, voice barely below a whisper as they his eyes flicker about the corridor. They’re walking. It’s not a good look to be honest- Taeil would’ve done it all differently, would’ve had a stake out in the rosebushes by the back entrance. He would’ve watched through binoculars until he was absolutely  _ sure _ the coast was clear, so long that when he took them away there would be circular shaped rims around his eyes. He would’ve picked the backlock with two paperclips, like he does when he forgets his keys, not climb up a fucking drainpipe.

Taeil knows what the man’s going to try. He’s going to try the window in the kitchen that Taeil rarely gets to see, he just knows it’s not cared about too much, not watched. It’s where the servants scurry about. Assasins don’t care about servants, after all.

“Walk a bit faster,” the man tugs the black sleeve of Taeil’s sweater. Sure enough, he’s being pulled through the white door of the kitchen. Taeil barely has a moment to admire the blue tiles pasted all over the walls before he’s being pulled over to the counter.

“Will an alarm go off here?” asks the man, hand on the window, hesitating. The gun get’s tucked with the handle hooking onto his belt. Taeil shakes his head, but really, he’s not too sure.

“...okay. You better not be lying. I won’t hesitate to kill you if i have to,” he pushes the window open and the sounds of distant cicadas becomes 90 percent louder. They always stick to the trees in the summer, body buzzing as they make that insufferable noise. Taeil had to suffer through it all night with his bedroom window (intentionally, mind you) open.

He grabs Taeil’s sleeve again and pushes him in front of the window.

“Climb through,” as if it weren’t obvious enough.

Taeil sighs through the cloth in his mouth and pulls his wrists apart, the rope holding them together falling apart to the floor. He doesn’t even look at the man as he uses his now-free hands to haul himself up onto the window ledge, tumbling down onto the tallgrass of the garden with rose bushes. He lies there for a moment even though there’s no reason to, fingers locking around his gag and pulling, trying to snap the oddly-stretchy fabric. He manages it after a few tries and throws it not too far away from him, panting. The gag smelled like drymarkers and rosewater.

“Don’t you fucking dare scream for help,” says the man, now looking down at him from where he stands in the grass. The window is pushed closed after him. Taeil thinks sideparted hair suits him but he’s still not a fan of the red shoes. “How did you-”

“I could break the bind easily. And don’t worry, i won’t scream for help,” Taeil pulls himself up. “We should run.”

All he gets is a dumb look and a nod before they start sprinting.

 

There are exactly 28 different waterpipes snaking just below ground level. They lead up to the palace from all sorts of places no ones thought to trace, bringing water to over 12 bathrooms and 7 different kitchens, not to mention the everpresent radiators.    
Taeil jumps, the man doesn’t know to, but he crashes to the ground in a move Taeil already foresaw. A metal pipe with the texture of a cheap accordion juts out of the ground in a weird loop, thick enough that Taeil’s servant(whats-his-name who had the veiny nose) told him stupid little kid stories about eels sleeping in them.

“Fuck!” the man groans. He’s now keeling over on the floor, clutching his ankle. His socks are getting stained from the blood, thankfully, it matches the red of his shoes.

Taeil looks back to the palace for a moment. That’s all it takes.

A finger press.

There’s a light on. It’s shining through overpadded, patterned curtains. Someone will notice Taeil’s empty four poster bed. Someone will, they’re always checking on him.

“Shit,” Taeil says.

“What?” replies the man, who’s now attempting to stand on his injured ankle.

“Shit,” Taeil repeats. “We have to go.  _ Now.” _

 

They’re running. Again, Taeil’s used to this kind of thing, he used to run after foxes with a rifle(safety off) tucked under his frail, 12 year old arm. That’s what it was like. To tell you the truth, he knew something was off, it wasn’t like you could eat foxes in the first place.   
“Why are you so cooperative?” asks the man and Taeil realises for a second that he’s quite young- maybe even younger than him.   
“You think you’re the only one who hates that place?” is all Taeil’s bothered to say. His lungs could burst, they’re running so fast, his converse he  _ slept  _ in and the man’s stupid red shoes throwing dust so it lands on more dust as they hit the ground. it’s always this dry in the summer.

 

There’s a fence. That’s the obstacle- all 10 feet of metal wires lined up like a barcode, slanted at the end, Taeil doesn’t get this far away from the palace usually. He’s hated enough that it could be fatal.

“How do we get over-” he starts to ask even though he can barely talk through the sand clogging up his insides. He’s not built for running.   
And the man leads by example, slotting his feet into the rails and grappling upwards, seemingly impossible, he jumps down to the grass on the other side of the fence.   
Taeil could leave him there, could run away. Except the man’s pointing the gun at him again and there’s no one around to hear the moment the bullet fires. Except Taeil’s got his mind set on leaving. He takes another deep breath, coughing a bit before launching himself at the fence, feeling the skinny strips of iron go through his fingers like a hot knife. He almost falls, misplacing one of his feet, but eventually he manages to reach the top. The man man only urges him to jump.   
“But don’t break your leg,” he’s saying like it’s an actual thing Taeil can do. “I’m not willing to carry you.”   
“I don’t expect anything from the person who kidnapped me,” Taeil replies. His mind is still far above them because his legs keep swaying too far above the ground and he’s  _ always  _ been bad with heights.    
In the distance, but undeniably there, an alarm sounds. That’s all the encouragement Taeil needs before he pushes himself off.   
He lands in a heap, probably leaving an imprint in the grass that resembles a corpse, but there’s no time to think about it and no time to look back- next he knows he’s taking the man’s hand and being pulled up. And they’re running again.

  
  


It’s a good loop through the seemingly endless forest before they reach anything  _ but  _ trees.

It comes in the form of an open field- grass just a bit battered from the wind, sky remaining gloomy grey despite the rising sun(is it really that early already?), heaps of thorn patches with high threadcounts. Taeil can’t seem to wrap his head around it all, so he doesn’t.

They’re not running anyhow. It’s almost like a stroll, even the presence of the gun isn’t a new feeling, the man isn’t overbearing. He looks incredibly worn out. His shoes still haven’t lost their shine and thats the most disappointing part.   
“I suppose now is the time to ask any questions,” he says as he kicks clumps of grass out of the ground. The morning dew starts soaking through Taeil’s shoes.   
“What’s your name?”   
“Seriously, that’s what you ask?” the man sighs. Taeil nods.   
The man turns his head and spits for no apparent reason. “Well, i guess you can call me Johnny.”   
_ Johnny, _ Taeil repeats in his head.  _ Johnny, Johnny, johhny. _ ****__  
He’s always been bad with names.   
“You know who i am,” he says. “At least, i think that’s why i’m here. It’s a royalty thing- right?”   
“Correct,” replies Johnny, smirking just a bit. He’s arrogant. That’s “how the youth are these days” according to Taeil’s flamboyant dad, who makes his own records and forces the servants to play them in the kitchen while they work. Taeil thinks it’s not so bad to be a confident “youth”.    
“Money?” he asks.   
“Nah,” the hill is getting shorter as they walk up it, just a slight slope but Taeil sees the top of an old tiled roof appearing in the distance. He  usually looks at the ground when he walks, so he goes back to that, the whole scenery is so drab. And then there’s the cuffs of his jeans that are soaked all the way through, his converse, just a step away are Johnny’s shoes that are still causing lens flare. Taeil can’t get past that.   
“Why then- to rebel?”   
“Ding ding ding! You got it!” Johnny’s proud of it, he’s grinning like he’s accepting a nobel prize. The young ones like their uproars, Taeil knows that all too well. It was only a matter of time. Taeil rolls his eyes. He’s quite satisfied with Johnny being the one to point a gun at him. If Taeil had a rifle, he could beat Johnny to death with the casing alone, and the thought’s somewhat comforting. He’ll definitely live, at least.   
“I’m against them too.”   
“Don’t lie, it’s not a good look.”   
Taeil shrugs. “Think about how they treat their kingdom, then think about how they’d probably treat their son.”   
“Sorry it had to be you,” Johnny says, no apologies on his tongue whatsoever. He’s unforgiving and Taeil knows why. “But some of us need a change.”   
Taeil goes quiet after that, instead appreciating how the house seems to rise up with ever step. It’s really a bundle of bricks, charred and chipped, cute brass chimney covered in soot, there aren’t as many windows as there were years ago. It’s mostly empty frames, but there’s a smashed one above the chipped red front door. Taeil swears he sees movement behind it- shadows against the wall, maybe, but it disappears as quickly as it shows.    
“Are you going to kill me?” he asks suddenly, and it surprises even himself. Beside him, Johnny sighs, kicking a polygon-shaped rock away.   
“What good would that be?” he replies, smile on his face. It’s scary in a way. 

They manage to trudge through the field, and to Taeil’s surprise, Johnny knocks on the faded front  door. He doesn’t bother to ask anything, it’s not like he’ll get a straight answer. 

The door swings open abruptly. A man with a hooked nose and laughing eyes pokes his head around the door, fistfuls of black hair falling over his forehead. He looks… pleased.

“I can’t believe you actually did it,” he says with an accent before holding the door open. Taeil watches Johnny reach for his gun before hesitating and pulling his hand away.

“Come in then,” says the other man and Taeil can do nothing but oblige. 

 

It’s only after Taeil’s sitting at a rickety table on a rickety stool with two men who are rickety themselves that he gets the chance to look around.    
The most striking thing about the “sitting room”(?? Taeil really can’t tell) are the walls; they’re so yellow they make his eyes sting. He rubs them absently as his lack of sleep catches up with him, though he’s always been a chronic insomniac and his legs are aching from the running. Johnny’s eyes flicker over his briefly and it leaves him curious about the walls yet again. Did Johnny paint them? The yellow’s barely chipped at all.   
Before him, Johnny’s chatting with the other man about nothing relevant, buttering a slice of bread on a gold rimmed antique plate. There’s a pot of coffee just out of Taeil’s reach, brewed black, but he isn’t offered anything.

“What’s the security like?” asks the other man. He’s leaning back so the chair rests on the wall behind him and two of the legs touch the ground. He’s short enough that his feet dangle just a bit and there’s an incredibly smug smile on his face as he refuses to look at Taeil.

“He left his window open,” Johnny yawns, slumping against the table as he buries his face into his arm. It comes out muffled. “Idiot.”

Taeil tunes out the rest of the conversation in favor of almost falling asleep with his head in his hands. He’s fucking exhausted, to be blunt, not only that but he’s just a bit intimadated by the other man. There’s ways to tell if someone has killed and his smirk speaks volumes about it, he’s been trying to hide the fact that he’s got a dagger on his belt ever since Taeil stepped into the house. What he doesn’t realise is that the rusty metal catches the light and makes it obvious.

The conversation turns to other people Taeil doesn’t know that ‘should be here soon’.

“-and Jaehyun’s bringing the necessities,” says the other man. “We should be able to keep  _ him _ ”- a dirty look at Taeil- “here as long as we have to.”

“What age are you anyway?” asks Johnny, who’s decidedly older than the other man. He looks more tired too and Taeil isn’t too sure if it’s just because he was out all last night. He doubts it. 

“21,” says Taeil, barely bothering to open his eyes.  They’re both looking at him and it makes a shiver go up his spine.

“Really?” the other man scoffs. “I thought we were older, to be honest.”

Johnny rolls his eyes. “Can’t you tell? Look at his eyebags-”

“So what age are you two then?”

They both give eachother blank looks, like they’re communicating telepathically. It’s a bit unnerving until Johnny takes a bite of toast and the moment is ruined.

“You don’t need to know,” he says, which means ‘we’re young’. Not like Taeil couldn’t already tell.

 

He’s still at the table, waiting for the other man and Johnny to get tired of it all, when there’s another knock at the door. The other man nods to Johnny who grabs Taeil by the wrist. Out of nowhere, he’s being pulled into- assumedly- a kitchen. It has granite tiles on the floor that a  _ lot  _ of coffee was spilled on, probably on multiple occasions. Take a wild guess as to who spilled it.

“Be quiet,” says Johnny, he’s standing at the opposite corner of the busted window. The light hits his jacket and makes the tipex glow. He’s so lame. Taeil complies, not like he had anything to say anyway, other than a select few insults about the dustiness of the kitchen. He feels like he’s going to sneeze and if there is a guard at the door, he’ll hear it, rush in and pull out a gun.    
Right now he should be at his violin lessons. He never wants to look at the instrument again so he presses himself up against the wall, trying not to breathe too loudly, scared of being taken back to the palace to sit another music exam.   
For a second, he feels dread, when there are loud voices at the door- but they sound happy- “ten!” he can hear someone say. Johnny smiles but hides it behind his hand. His knuckles are red, and bumpy, and Taeil doesn’t find out why until he’s brought back to the sitting room and he watches Johnny bite them absently. 

There are three men at the door, all three perk up when they see Taeil. One’s eyes goes so wide that they look like they’ll pop out and roll across the split wooden floor, only stopping when they hit Johnny’s stupid red shoes. His face is too soft to even be remotely intimidating. Taeil’s still the most scared about the dagger, but really, they’re a young lot- bright eyes and all. It makes the matching leather jackets even funnier and he tries not to laugh then and there.

“Didn’t think you’d actually do it,” says the one with the earrings, voice accented and excited.

“That’s what i said too,” says the other man(ten?). “He’s such a pussy sometimes, like remember when-”

“Hey, hey, hey, cut it out! Who got the prince? Who?” Johnny interrupts, the way his lips curl upwards contradicting how annoyed he sounds. They really are just a gang of kids, Taeil reminds himself, for comfort more than anything else. Really, that dagger terrifies him and the gun kind of makes Johnny threatening. 

He takes a moment to scan the other three for weapons. The one with the soft face is unknowingly about to have a switchblade slip out of his jacket pocket. The one with the impractical ripped jeans has a flashy revolver that doesn’t even try to hide itself. The one with the earrings has a hand around a closed opinel knife that’s polished so much it’s blinding. Taeil might as well go and snatch a butterknife off the table, the amount of blades in this room is making his heart go a bit weak.

“So now we-” starts soft-face, he lifts an arm to play with his hair and the switchblade clatters to the ground.

“Shut up, we don’t want  _ him  _ knowing our plans,” Johnny interrupts. “We’ll talk about it in a minute, just let me take him upstairs,” he’s grabbing Taeil’s wrist again, pulling him out to the hall.

 

“Follow me,” when he lets Taeil’s arm drop, there’s marks on the skin. Johnny doesn’t have soft hands, the skins a bit rough from something or other and it sort of makes Taeil wince with the sting. That’s the least of his problems.   
“Are you scared?” Johnny asks, already trudging up the stairs. Taeil rushes to keep up with him.    
The steps are just as rickety as the chairs and tables, if a wind comes from the right angle they could all collapse. They were made to be carpetted, but that’s not how things are, the bright wood splinters and breaks and creaks and Taeil’s  _ terrible  _ with heights.   
“Somewhat,” he replies, unsure of what else to say. “You all have knives.”

_ He doesn’t want to say he’s scared for them. _

They have good intentions, to be perfectly honest, they just want to stop his family. They won’t get far and it’s just a bit scary, the guards are all so-

“You seemed nervous of ten,” says Johnny, stopping Taeil’s train of thought.   
“I never thought i’d meet someone shorter than him.”

Taeil groans. “Don’t remind me.”

They reach the top of the stairs before Taeil faints. That’s so far the best thing that’s happened all day, and Johnny has to ruin it by laughing at his face.

“You look awful,” he’s saying as he walks down the landing corridor. It’s got yellow paint on the ceiling that’s fresher looking than the whole of the house. Taeil has his hand on the right wall as he follows, to ground himself mostly, why is vertigo such a  _ bitch? _

“So do you,” is all he can find the wit to say. One day he’ll insult those shoes, one day when Johnny no longer carries a gun everywhere.

Johnny stops in front of the most ominous door there. It’s dark wood with a small latch to look through, most definitely unopenable from the other side.

“Alright, touchy,” Johnny says, holding the handle but not opening it. “Ladies first.”

Taeil sighs and moves in front of the door, no doubt he’s going to be pushed into the room. Johnny undoes the latch and it creaks open, swinging inwards.    
It’s not quite as? Scary? As Taeil expected. It’s a simple box room, white walls, bed with ruffled duvets. It’s the sort of room you see in pamphlets for medieval BnB’s, except Taeil’s actually here, actually kidnapped by an actual group of men who are actually rebelling against his family. Johnny doesn’t push him in, surprisingly, but points to the bed.

“Sit there,” he says. “Don’t try anything. I’m pretty sure that Ten reads in here so if you’re bored just look around for a book or something. I’ll check on you in a bit.”

Taeil walks over to the bed and sits, not even bothering to look around. Johnny presses the lights on before closing the door behind him. Taeil barely realised the window was bricked up before that.   
He hears the latch creak shut, hears the noise of a key turning. Sighing, he kicks his shoes off. Old habits die hard and all that, years of washing the soles of his shoes before setting foot in the palace have taken its toll.

He let’s himself crash onto the bed. It’s the first time he falls asleep that fast in years.

 

He doesn’t wake up until god knows when, barely an idea of the current year, there’s a tray resting on a rickety(a running trend in this house) desk on the opposite wall.   
Taeil rubs the sleep out of his eyes before dragging himself over.   
There’s toast on the plate, seemingly cold. Taeil sighs. At least he has a pint of  soda to go with it.   
an index card lies on the tray, the kind you find in out of touch libraries, with messy writing all over it. Taeil’s best guess is Johnny.   
‘ _ You were asleep so i just left this here for you. Don’t starve- i don’t want blood on my hands.’  _ Taeil sighs, nothing he didn’t already know. If they want him alive, logical thinking tells him they’re writing a ransom- They’re very predictable in that way.    
Taeil sighs again and makes a paper aeroplane out of the note- something he hasn’t done ever since his teacher hit him for throwing one in class all those years ago. He’ll probably have to look around for those books Johnny was talking about if he’s going to last through his extreme boredom.

 

Ten  _ has  _ got books around. A whole box of them, in fact- some porn magazines that Taeil avoids touching, some weird biographies of famous singers( his obvious love for old girlbands sends Taeil into a fit of laughter at one point), a surprising amount of scifi novellas, a single sketchbook(most pages are empty- the rest are fucking beautiful) and finally a  _ murder mystery. _ God yes.   
Taeil thumbs through the yellow stained pages(you’ve seen the kind) until he reaches a picture of the author at the back of the book. He scans the back cover, something about a posh woman found dead in a stable. The cover’s blue and it clashes with the aformentioned stained pages.

Taeil loves these things, mysteries, hardboiled detective stories, dramatic court systems and weirdly circumstencial weapons. It almost makes him smile.   
Then he hears the latch opening, his face drops.

“Hey,” says Johnny, knuckles redder than last time as he clutches the door. “I know you can’t tell the time in here. Just letting you know, it’s dark out. You should probably sleep.”

“Thanks..?” Taeil replies. Johnny nods and walks over to take the tray off the desk.

“You’ll most likely be interrogated tomorrow,” Johnny says, now back at the door.

“Okay,” what else is he meant to say? That he’ll literally spill any secret?

“Well… okay.”

The door’s shut, Taeil hears it lock again. He subconciously takes a shaky breath. Does Johnny know how confusing he is?

 

When he wakes up (presumably)the next morning, it’s to laughter. He doesn’t even know why until he reaches up to rub his eyes and… there’s the murder mystery book covering his face. He must’ve fallen asleep reading it. He groans and throws it aside.   
The man with the soft face is at the door, laughing so hard the tray he’s holding almost clatters to the ground. “Good morning,” he says, still smiling. 

“What time is it?” asks Taeil but it comes out 60 percent yawn. 

“Like 11 or something? Basically everyone’s awake,” as the man walks to the desk you can hear the keys linked onto his belt clink together. “I’m Jaehyun, by the way.”

“Fake name?” Taeil asks. He becomes aware of how he’s been wearing this shirt for two days and it makes him more uncomfortable than he’d like to admit.

“We all gave you fake names,” Jaehyun turns and smiles at Taeil again. He’s nice, Taeil realises, just trying to change things. Seemingly the youngest out of the group too.

“Tell Johnny i want to talk to him later,” Taeil says just before Jaehyun closes the door.

“Right, will do-” it comes out almost inaudible as the door swings shut.

 

Taeil’s still eating breakfast when he hears Johnny undoing the latch.   
He’s halfway through his toast(again, yes) and a quarter way through  _ another  _ pint of soda when the door’s opened. And now, Johnny stands at the door expectantly.   
“You called?” he’s saying between bites of his poor knuckles. 

Taeil puts his slice of toast back down on the plate. It’s cold anyway. “I did.”

Johnny rolls his eyes for literally no reason. He’s not wearing the leather jacket, Taeil realises, just a black vest and the usual jeans. The red shoes are  _ not  _ present, just white fluffy socks that you wear on sick days. It almost feels like a loss. Almost. “What is it?” Johnny asks, leaning his shoulder against thee empty bookcase he’s taller than, but that’s hardly an uncommon occurence.

“I’ve been wearing these clothes for three days,” Taeil replies, choosing to not bring up the eye roll.

Johnny’s nose wrinkles “Gross.”

“I know! Do you have any spares?”

Johnny pretends to think about it, humming as he holds his chin. “I suppose i’ll check for you,  _ Your Highness. _ You this used to bossing people around?”

Taeil scoffs but decides against responding. There’s no point in arguing with someone who carries a gun everywhere, he’s gone through all that waith his father anyway.

Just as Johnny’s closing the door, he pauses and pokes his head around it one last time. “Are your shoes wet?” he asks.

Taeil looks over at his converse that are practically all laces at this point. They’re soaked through and through from the field yesterday. He nods.

Johnny pads over and scoops them up. “I’ll dry these for you,” he says, having no particular reason to lie about a pair of grass stained shoes, before he leaves the room. Taeil’s alone again. Again, he’s used to it.

 

He’s 72 pages into the book, leaning against the bedframe with his knees pressed against his chest, the detective sends his assistant to find a missing person who used to be a boat contstructor, but his assistant doesn’t return. Completely immersed in the world, he frantically flips to the next page and oh my god-

“You seriously didn’t hear me unlock the door?” Johnny’s standing there again with his eyebrows raised, a bundle of folded clothes in his arms. “How good  _ is  _ that book?”

Taeil’s head snaps up so fast at the sudden appearance. “It’s actually so good,” without  ealising it, he starts gushing- “the detective has a really unique personality compared to other detective novels and it works so well. The assistant seems like she should be taking th e lead because of her authority, so i think the romance between them is fucking brilliant. Not only that but the descriptions of the murder scene are so real that i can  _ see  _ the corpse in my mind. Oh my god, it’s so good,” he’s smiling without realising it.

“Huh,” Johnny plops the clothes down on his bed.

“Huh?” Taeil repeats, eyebrows scrunching together. He can’t decide if Johnny’s uninterested or weirded out about the body thing.

Johnny reaches down and picks the book from Taeil’s hands, looking at the cover with mild curiosity. “Didn’t know you liked that kind of thing.”

“Well, we don’t really know eachother-”

“You don’t seem the type, is what I’m saying,” Johnny shrugs. He looks especially tall now, standing above Taeil while he reads the blurb.

“Neither does Ten,” says Taeil. To be blunt, Ten terrifies Taeil. He’s the most likely to pull a knife at any given moment, probably with a wide grin, like serial killers in slasher movies- the similarities are endless. 

“Fair point,” says Johnny, handing him back the book with a half-smile. “...anyway. Get dressed and then I’ll let you downstairs so we can question you,” with that, he leaves.

Taeil turns to the pile of clothes.    
A black jumper with a high collar, it must be Johnny’s because it’s much baggier than the size Taeil usually wears- he folds the neck of it downwards so it won’t get ruffled.   
Ripped jeans, Taeil sighs. Do they wear anything else? What will he find next- a pop punk cd?   
And of course, a pair of (you guessed it) black underwear, matching black fluffy socks. Taeil’s favourite colour is black but  _ come on, _ is he attending a funeral?

Nevertheless, he hurries with getting changed, eager to be anywhere but the box room. Maybe see some natural light, little things like that drive him crazy. In the box room all he hears himself and it makes him want to scream just to make some noise. One day in.

 

The man with the earrings comes to get him, raising his eyebrows at the new outfit but staying quiet mostly.

“Aren’t you going to tell me your fake name?” Taeil eventually asks as he focuses especially hard on not falling down the terrifying stairs.

The man’s in front of him, he turns around just to smile. “I’m Yuta,” he says. “Who are you?”

Look, Taeil get’s it. Don’t give him the satisfaction of acknowledging his status. Yuta’s passive aggressive, surely. It’s not like he’s wrong to be. “Moon Taeil, i play the violin,” he says.

“Very fancy~”

So Taeil has the gist of 4 out of the 5 men, but there’s that one with the revolver who hasn’t spoke a word. Taeil figures he’ll introduce himself soon.  

He’s brought into the sitting room again, where Johnny looks up from his toast(is that all they eat?) to give him a halfbaked smile. Ten’s got his admittably cool boots propped up on the table so the whole thing shakes. He doesn’t acknowledge them.   
And there’s the quiet man, he’s sitting on the sofa with Jaehyun, leaning against eachother in a questionable manner.   
“Here he is, our prince,” Yuta says, full of that sarcasm Taeil could only imagine. 

“Ah, how lovely to see you, my majesty,” ten says as he inspects his nails. Taeil rolls his eyes in an alternate universe where he’s not so scared of men only slightly taller than him( excluding Jaehyun and Johnny who can probably reach the top shelf at the supermarket). He knew he’d get this kind of hassle. He can see why, too, but he still wants to shout at the top of his lungs “I’m not my parents!”. Ten’s probable response; “the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree”. So he keeps his mouth shut, for fear of getting diced by at least three knives. 

“Sit down,” Johnny commands and Taeil halfheartedly obeys, taking the chair next to him. The one across from Johnny, of course, is occupied by ten, so now they’re turned to awkwardly face eachother. Johnny holds a slice of toast out for Taeil who gladly takes it.

“What do you want to know?” he asks as he eats around the bread crust. Johnny nudges the empty plate towards him and Taeil leaves the crust on it. He’s always hated those parts, since Johnny takes the plates away he’s surely noticed.

“Well say if,  _ hypothetically _ of course, i kidnap a prince from a royal palace and threaten the king with him… how much danger am I in?” Johnny asks and Taeil laughs despite himself. 

“Gee i don’t know,” he plays along, stroking his chin and looking up to the ceiling. “Maybe, just maybe, a lot?”

And now Johnny’s laughing to his knuckles too, of course, Taeil wonders if he’ll ever leave them alone. On the sofa the quiet man and Jaehyun are whispering to each other. No one can hear well enough to tell what it’s about other than that Jaehyun keeps laughing too. 

Johnny fills Taeil a glass of soda with a lopsided grin. “But seriously though… how fucked am I?”

“Look, I’ll basically tell you what’s going to happen,” Taeil says, face turning darker. He doesn’t like breaking news. He likes joking around, but now, his absence is definitely noticed and who’s to tell how safe this place is? Taeil wishes he was one of the Leather Jackets Club, tipex and all, so he could change things from the outside. It’s much harder to change things from within and Taeil’s sick of trying.   
“You’re  _ highly _ likely to be found. And if they find you, you’re as good as gone. The guards are ruthless, I know a handful personally(though I wish I didn’t), and they will stop at nothing. They’re fucking crazy.”

And the room goes quiet, just like the box room upstairs, Taeil wants to scream. “I’m sorry it’s like this,” he says instead. He wishes he was as hopeful as any one of them in the room. Johnny’s looking at him blankly, almost overpouring the soda before Taeil tips the bottle up for him. 

“Will they find us?” asks Yuta, clearly panicking. It seems that everyones only realised the danger just now, because there’s nothing but wide eyes on Taeil. Their cluelessness is astonishing, truly.

“I don’t know, honestly, but I’ll try and answer your questions,” Taeil says. “Listen, I know this seems far-fetched but I really fucking hate them too. I  _ really _ fucking hate them, trust me. I’ll help if I can.”

“Doubt it,” says ten imediaetly after Taeil finishes his sentence. “You have everything to gain from lying.” _“the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree,”_ _alternate dimension ten whispers in Taeil’s ear._

“That’s fine. I get it.”

“What weapons do the guards carry?” asks the quiet man. Taeil forgot he was there, despite the incessant hushed voices in the background.

Taeil tries not to think about himself when he answers. “Rifles,” he’s saying just as he takes a sip of soda. Their rifles kill more than foxes however, just like his father’s that’s displayed behind a glass case in one of the sitting rooms. Taeil’s not allowed in there.

“God,” Yuta mutters. “How posh of them.”

“They really go all out, don’t they?” Jaehyun agrees. “So over the top, people are already too scared to go near them in the first place but they carry rifles anyway.”

“Once i threw a rock at one,” ten says with a smile plastered on his face. It always seems too tacked on. Taeil wonders if he’s usually this pleasant or if it’s a special case today.   
“I was hiding behind a bush and one walked by and i just threw it, y’know? I got away with it too. He only chased me for a kilometer or something.”

“How old is the king?” Johnny asks and Taeil can only shrug.

“We don’t talk about personal things like that.”

 

Johnny brings him up to his room only a few minutes later, strangely quiet Johnny, shoulders hunched Johnny, frowning Johnny with a hand on the pointy banister.   
Without a word, he lets Taeil into the room. Without a word, the door’s locked again.   
Taeil cries for them, how dumb is that? He cries for the people who  _ kidnapped _ him. He’s always been a crybaby like that. Too much empathy, his mother used to say. She meant it as an insult. All things seem to go that way for him. 

 

For an hour after that, his book has tearstained pages that match his face.

 

Johnny calls in again that night, just when Taeil feels like he’s had enough of reading. He wants to save the book for as long as possible, draw the story out so far that he doesn’t feel insane with boredom.   
Johnny’s a distraction, for now, at least.

“Your eyes are red, you should’ve told me if you’re allergic to dust,” he’s saying, leaning against the bookshelf again.

“What good would that do?” Taeil asks genuinely. He doesn’t expect Johnny to pull out the hoover anytime soon, though the thought is touching. Johnny sits at the desk in the guise of collecting the tray. He shrugs.

“Anyway,” he says. “Hows your book now?”

“I’m trying to save it, so not particularily well,” Taeil responds honestly. He’s sitting at the edge of the bed he’s grown tired of feeling, it’s not even day two yet.   
From the desk lamp, he can make out the red on Johnny’s knuckles again before they’re held up to push hair out of his face. Sideparted hair.“You know you can just ask Ten for another book, right?”   
“No, Ten hates me,” Taeil sighs.

Johnny shrugs again “We all hate you,” he’s saying too sincerely for Taeil’s tastes.

“Yeah but Ten looks like he wants to  _ murder _ me,” Taeil responds.

“Well… can you blame him? He’s been fucked over for all his life because of the slums your father refuses to clean up.”

And finally Taeil says it-- “i’m not my father.”

“But it’s easy to get mixed up, right? We’re all wary of you. We all have something against you,” Johnny replies easily, parting his hair carefully with his fingers. 

“I know, and I get it, but I have something against him too.”

“I realise that, and I’m trying not to hate you for no reason, but it’s hard,” Johnny stands up, stopping just before the door.

“It’s night now, you should get some rest. We all know it’s going to get harder from here on out.”

And with that, Taeil hears the latch being closed.

 

When he wakes up again the trays already left on the desk. He lies in bed for another few minutes anyway before he finally bothers to drag himself to the desk.   
This time, it’s a chocolate iced donut and another pint of soda. He tries to remember the last time he drank water, but the days stretch so far it feels like he’s been in the house he once admired on a hill for the remainder of summer. In reality, it’s day two and Taeil wants to see the sky.   
There’s a note left on the tray as always, on another index card which has a stamp on the back and cursive reading ‘ _ BOOK BORROWED BY: [chittaphon leechaipornkul] _ ’ for a moment, Taeil wonders who it is. Then he just finds himself reading the message from Johnny(it’s the messy handwriting again).

_ ‘I thought you’d be sick of toast, so here we are. And I’m sorry for being so harsh last night. You’re right, you’re not your father. _ _  
_ _ P.S: we have to take photos of you later as proof we have you so I’ll bring you fresh clothes at some point’ _

Taeil makes this index card into a paper hat and leaves it sitting on the tray for (most likely) Johnny to find. 

 

The latch is slid open, yet again, and Johnny trudges in. He seems especially grumpy today, Taeil frowns as he sits up in bed.

“I’ll just get your tray,” Johnny’s saying, just after dumping a heap of clothes on the bed. Taeil sighs, all black again today.

“When can I shower?” he blurts without really meaning to. He’s so sick of his greasy hair though, he’d honestly bathe in a tub full of bleach at this point. It doesn’ come to that.

Johnny picks up the tray, he’s smiling again but it’s quickly hidden behind his oddly rough hands. “Soon,” he says, pausing just at the door. “Get dressed quickly. I’ll be up again in five minutes and I don’t really feel like walking in on anything.”

Taeil nods and watches him leave.

 

Vaguely true to his word, Johnny sends Jaehyun up to get him. Taeil’s just grateful it’s not Yuta, or (thanks be to god) Ten at the door. Jaehyun’s as cheery as ever, taking Taeil’s laundry in his arms to put through the spin cycle, all with a smile on his face. 

“Good morning,” he says in a way that makes Taeil believe it. 

Taeil, who’s wearing all black like a human insulator, doesn’t really feel like eating toast for the rest of his life- Especially when he can smell bacon frying downstairs. The rooms enough to make him go crazy as it is, but pile on a ban on all foods non-dough related and daily life becomes a struggle. Day 3, he thinks, clenching and unclenching his fists as he hears Yuta’s loud voice in the sitting room. Don’t trip on the stairs, he thinks afterwards.

 

“You look like a grave robber,” says Yuta as soon as they open the sitting room door.

Taeil itches at his collar and mumbles out an “okay.”

“Oh how the tables have turned,” thats when his eyes are drawn to ten- sitting on a rickety chair, buttering a slice of toast. How does a human survive on that? “Does it feel weird to be insulted, Your Highness?”

“Shut up, Ten,” Jaehyun says, still by Taeil’s side, still grinning too.

 

It is of course the quiet man who owns the camera. Polaroid- shaped like a lunchbox carton of milk, the lense is the only thing on the front of it. It doesn’t even have flash, Taeil realises just as he’s about to squint his eyes to avoid getting blinded. He’s tied to a chair in a way that looks ominous, but his hands are held together by a simple knot you’d use to tie your laces, it’s all for show. They’re in the kitchen and Taeil’s shoved to the corner of the drywall so the location is completely unidentifiable. 

Johnny’s the one with the camera. It doesn’t really matter until he shoos the others away, telling them to clear up the table like it’s not a one-man-job he does by himself every afternoon. Or maybe he doesn’t, Taeil wouldn’t know. He’s always in that fucking room.

“Look scared,” Johnny says, peering through the preview glass as he holds the camera a sort of shaky-still.    
Taeil widens his eyes and generally tries to look terrified but suddenly Johnny’s laughing and  bvhe’s laughing too and the whole things  _ ruined. _ Johnny takes the photo anyway, leaving it on the counter to develope, before angling the camera again. “Say cheese.”

“Cheese,” Taeil drones. This somewhat reminds him of his back to school photoshoots, where his mother would order photographers in to take pictures of him in his uniform, bag on back, if you look at them again you can see how staged it is. He never carried a bag to school- it was down the hall in the ‘study room’. A shame he couldn’t go to public school with the rest of the kids he’d never seen.

Johnny’s eyes linger for just long enough that Taeil notices, even after the polaroid’s dangling around his neck on a strap, even after he’s put the cover on the lens. He looks at the photos for longer than necessary. “Blurry photo,” he supplies, though Taeil knows the pictures as clear as anything. It makes him nervous.

And then he’s undoing the ropes around Taeil’s wrists, leaving nail marks like he did when he would grab Taeil by the wrist to drag him somewhere. The rope falls to the floor but his hands are still there. That is, until Taeil stands up and runs a hand through his own hair.

“Shower. Right,” Johnny says, probably remembering because of Taeil’s still-greasy hair.

“I’ll show you where it is.”

 

He finds the shower a bit past his stupid latched door, the window may be busted but it has a makeshift curtain over it- a towel, tacky hawaii print and all, lifts slightly with the occasional breeze. Taeil takes a deep breath of finally fresh air, looking around until he spots a crate full of shampoo bottles, the dark plue paint from the wood chips and is sprinkled about the hardwood floor.

“Here we are,” says Johnny, quite obviously, he’s absently fiddling with the gun again. Taeil doesn’t know if he realises it or not.

“Very… quaint,” Taeil replies, with risk of sounding vain or coming off as a stuck up monarch. It’s only halfway between a joke and the truth. The place stinks of paint stripper and he wants nothing more than to stick his head out the window.

“Don’t fucking try anything,” Johnny warns before he closes the door behind him.

There’s a very  _ open  _ window just here, 0 percent closed, 100 percent within reach. The most Taeil expects from it is a huff of air that smells like bog. There’s no use in screaming. He doesn’t particularliy feel like it, anyway- that urge is reserved for when he’s in the boxroom and it’s anywhere between 12 p.m and 8 a.m.   
So he steps into the shower and discovers it only runs cold water.  _ Ice cold. _

 

The next few days become as simple as the marks on ten’s old phonebook calendar. Day 6, nothing extroardinary, just Yuta making fun of him about his tendency to play with his own hair(“miss that crown, Your Highness?”), Johnny collecting trays and leaving clothes with index cards in the pockets, on Day 4 Ten dropped a book in. Jaehyun’s nice. The quiet man seems harmless enough. 

Pleasantly boring, boringly pleasant. Not like home. It’s a nice change, in a way, besides Ten’s smile. There’s something off about that boy.

Ultimately, Taeil is surprised when Johnny’s shaking his shoulder to wake him up, Day 6 mind you, the world pixelates as Taeil tries to sit himself up. 

Johnny wears a baggy black sweater even though it’s summer in Seoul, following the quiet man’s lead with the impractical ripped jeans. “Follow me,” he’s saying- either quietly or Taeil’s not awake enough to hear properly yet. He finds himself nodding as a hand reaches for his, pulling him out of bed. There’s no danger, no urgency besides the everpresent threat of guards coming in and shooting every last one of them until they can swish their rifle heads about in pools of blood. Taeil tries not to think about such things so early in the morning. He succeeds, if only for Johnny’s smile.

 

To his surprise, he’s brought to the sitting room for no other reason than to “have breakfast”, as Jaehyun explains it, looking just a bit out of place without the quiet man.

“Where is he anyway?” Taeil asks as he takes a rickety seat beside Johnny’s rickety seat and across from Jaehyun’s rickety seat. Yuta’s in the kitchen with Ten, supposedly brewing coffee while Ten fries rashers.

“Who?” asks Jaehyun as he pours them all soda. Who does the shopping for this household? Have they heard of ‘kidney failure’?

“The quiet man…?”

They both give Taeil blank looks.

“He has a revolver.”

“-Oh! You mean Taeyong!” Jaehyun replies.

Johnny nods vigorously. “I always forget you never hear him talk. He’s gone shopping for us, you know, we barely have any food left.”

“So… No more toast to eat then?” Taeil says, completely serious. It only becomes a joke when Jaehyun lets out an ugly snort and tries to cover it up by coughing.

“Oh no, don’t worry! There’s  _ plenty  _ of that left!” - is Johnny being sarcastic or is Taeil going to throw himself out the bathroom window? He laughs at Taeil’s drawn face.   
They eat rashers straight from the skillet pan Yuta puts on the table. For a moment, smoke emits from the wood, then it thins in the air. There are tons of skillet-pan-shaped burn marks all over the surface already, it makes Taeil happy in a way. Carefree. They live on paychecks saved from when Ten painted houses last summer, according to Johnny, and now they huddle up like friends when it’s cold instead of heating up the water in those 28 eel-shaped pipes under the ground. He’s jealous, which is something you can’t say through his permanently pursed lips. Just a bit bitter, maybe.

And they all think he’s the golden boy. They’re right, but that doesn’t mean the gold doesn’t scorch you.   
Jaehyun kicks his leg from under the table, softly, he smiles and mouths “you okay?”

Too good, Taeil thinks, too fucking good. “Yep!” he mouths back, exclamation mark and all. He’s alright now, if he can just avoid those guards until his dad kicks the bucket or something.

 

“I trust you enough,” Johnny’s saying as he predictably and singlehandedly clears the table. “To let you out just  _ this once. _ Alright? But you have to help me with the dishes.”

Taeil nods so hard his neck almost snaps. He winces at the familliar feeling as he reaches for Yuta’s glass with his free hand. 

Johnny rolls up his sleeves and turns to Taeil expectantly. The pink apron suits him, in a weird way that Taeil chooses to ignore.   
He rolls up his sleaves aswell and Johnny gives him a satisfied look. The only noise is the water hitting the base of the metal sink, suds start spilling and no one notices until Johnny yelps and switches the tap off.

“Have you done this before?” he asks, recomposing himself. His knuckles are particularily bruised today, Taeil notices, eyes resting on them as Johnny washes a gold rimmed plate. 

He clears his throat, just now processing the question. “Is it okay if I say no?”

Johnny chuckles. His voice is incredibly low sometimes, Taeil thinks, in a way it suits his height. In another way it’s a disservice to the both of them. “I can’t believe you’ve never washed the dishes.”

“Is it really that unbelievable? I mean I grew up in a palace-”

“Don’t worry about it. There’s always time to learn things,” Johnny sounds exactly like Taeil’s old french teacher- the one that got fired for being ‘too soft’. How lame.

“There’s not much to learn really,” Taeil replies, pulling on the rubber gloves that were only half-on the counter in the first place, mostly dangeling over the edge.

“Then you do it,” Johnny steps aside. The soap dribbles down his own matching pair of rubber gloves and runs all over the granite tiles again.

Taeil scoffs. “Is that a challenge?”

“It’d only be a challenge if you were too short to reach the sink…” Johnny goes to bite his knuckles but ends up biting the glove and getting soap in his mouth. Serves him right. After he spits out the window(while making overdramatic gagging noises), he makes it a point to look down at Taeil. “Maybe it is a challenge, actually.”

In Taeil’s opinion, he dragged the joke out too long and it fell flat. No dignified response.    
And the plates are easy to wash too, of course, he cleans all 5 forks, all 5 glasses, 1 skillet pan, 2 plates and a familiar yellow tray. 

“Wow, good job,” Johnny’s voice leaks sarcasm the same way suds leak from the sink, slipping down the countertops. Taeil has big hands, he supposes. “I am  _ proud.” _

“This is worse than being kidnapped,” Taeil sniffs. 

“Yeah, yeah,” Johnny says, finally taking his messy gloves off and throwing them aside. “Wasn’t your home life already worse?”

“Well,  _ obviously.  _ Do you think I just leave my window open every night?” Taeil does the same. He goes to untie Johnny’s apron but stops himself before he can. Johnny doesn’t notice.

“It’s not so far fetched. It’s the summer, after all.”

“My parents would  _ kill _ me if I left the window open,” Taeil says, and it’s true- they’re so fearful about that kind of thing, someone could easily come in through Taeil’s bedroom and steal a bunch of jewlerry that Taeil finds scattered about the place. They’re only careful externally.

Internally… well, that’s another thing entirely, and Taeil tries not to think about it, tries not to think about poor Joohyun and-

“Are you alright?”- only then does Taeil realise he’s gone quiet.

“I don’t know. Am I having toast for dinner again?”

 

Taeyong comes back later than he should, according to Jaehyun who’s recounting the whole thing at the table. Taeil spent the rest of Day 6 in his room with no real hope of leaving it. That is, until Yuta ordered him downstairs.

‘ _ House meeting _ ’, he’d called it, eyes wide and just a bit scared. Taeil didn’t even need to ask.

“The guards…” Taeyong starts, looking only slightly shaken, he’s had his hand on the revolver the whole time, eyes keep flickering to the window. “The king ordered them to search all the houses.”

Ten’s the first to groan. “Did you see them?”

“Yeah, if rifles are anything to go by. They were knocking on doors and-”

“Are we safe?” asks Yuta, snapping the blade of his knife open and closed. 

“...Not for long.”

Taeil’s whole world comes crashing down.  _ This is it. _

 

He still doesn’t get a weapon, as Day 7 rolls around and the worry is all about the place. Especially in Yuta, in Johnny, who’s stressing over everyone as the leader.

Especially Taeil who finds a clump of his hair on his pillow.    
The harsh reality; it’s only a matter of time. 

Johnny forgets to leave him breakfast and comes in to apologise later.

“We’ve all been stressed,” he says, sheepishly dropping the tray on the desk. 

Taeil can’t blame him. “I can tell.”

“We just- what’s there to do?” 

Taeil walks over and puts a hand on his shoulder, having to reach up. It’s warm. Johnny takes a shaky breath. “We’ll figure it out. We’ll figure it out.”   
Taeil nods, still not retracting his hand. “Be very careful.”   
He ignores the way Johnny leans into his touch like that.

 

Tensions are high at breakfast, Yuta looks like he’s been crying in his sleep with his red-rimmed eyes, Ten still won’t shut up but it’s a thankful distraction.    
Taeyong offered to cook today, he’s the kind to use plates, unlike the rest. Jaehyun sticks especially close to him today. Their shoulders are brushing at the table.

It seems like all the blame’s on Taeil. Doesn’t make sense, but it sounds right in theory. In practice, it’s Johnny’s fault for taking him here- restless Johnny who waves everything off and poor Johnny who’s the only one to acknowledge Ten’s chatter.

“What’s… that?” Yuta points out the window in a way that reveals his tearstained sleeve cuffs. 

Oh shit.

Ten drags his chair out noisily and trudges over to the window, peering out through the misty glass. He rests his hand on his dagger and sighs. “I’ll deal with this,” before anyone can stop him, he’s walking out of the house.

Taeil rushes over to the window, half fearing for his life and just a bit of worry for Ten’s he seems the type to live by “life fast, die young” and Taeil can’t say he’s expecting for Ten to be doing something completely rational, like going for a morning jog, there’s redflags all over the place.

“Fuck,” Johnny mumbles faintly, Taeil’s really not paying attention to him at all, not until he sees Johnny stepping out into the field himself, approaching Ten and another figure.

And ten has his hands tucked deep in his pockets, facing away, undoubtedly smiling in a way that _ will _ get him shot. With bullets, with rifles, with mean looks- not with cameras like he clearly wants.

Taeil opens the window just a bit so he can listen in.

“You really telling me you need to search a house this far out?” ten’s saying, Taeil can  _ hear  _ that fucking smile in his voice.

“Oh, god,” Yuta’s trying to shield his eyes from the sight but his fingers always part. “Oh god. Oh god. Oh god.”

“I’m sorry sir, it’s my orders,” the figure says. The light catches an overpolished rifle being held over his shoulder. 

“Fuck,” Yuta whispers. “That’s Hansol.”

“Hansol?” Taeil replies, looking at the guard. He’s young for his job, most of the army roster is filled up with bitter old men, that’s the generation where his father’s views comes from and well…

“Hansol,” Yuta just repeats. “What’s he doing here?” 

“ _ Taeil,” _ he barely catches Jaehyun hiss. “Hide _. Now.” _

With that, he runs, up the stairs without even thinking about splinters and rickety structuring and vertigo. Where does he go…?

On instinct, he finds himself in the bathroom, needing to see more than anything.

So he peaks over the windowsill where he gets a much better view of the scene.

“You don’t need to search in here, I can guarantee,” Ten’s saying and Johnny nods. They’re clueless.

“Better safe than sorry,” Hansol(?) says and attempts to walk past them. Bad idea.   
Taeil ducks his head away just as Ten pulls out his dagger with all the suicidalness of a late college student crossing the road.

Taeil shuts his eyes closed and then some, head in his lap, thoughts of the wallmounted rifle going through his brain and n that’s ruined by the sound of a gunshot so heavy his eardrums sting.

  
  
  
  


The sound doesn’t phase him as much, sometimes it was him who caused it, shakey finger on the trigger and crosshairs still impossibly stable despite his shivering state, at the point the two red lines met the bullet hole could be found, piercing right through the flesh of a fox. But, Johnny, but Johnny, Johnny, Johnny, Johnny, Ten, Johnny.

  
  
  
  


When Taeil looks up, a blood splattered rifle lies in the grass and Johnny’s in the exact same state a meter away.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             

“Hansol!” Yuta cries, but Taeil cannot hear him.

  
  
  


(when did he start crying? When did he start thinking about Joohyun?)

 

“Oh, fuck,” he barely hears the familiar voice say, but his eyes snap open imediately.   
There’s the body of Hansol, doused in blood, not even twitching. Taeil almost sees the red crosshairs on the bullet hole on his chest. Ten’s standing completely still but he’s not looking at Hansol, he’s looking at Johnny.   
Johnny, sitting up in the grass, gun on his lap as he cradles his right hand. “Oh fuck,” he’s repeating until it loses it’s meaning. So he’s never shot a gun before-- that’s Taeil’s best guess, he’s never shot a fucking gun and his fingers snapped in the recoil. That’s just how handguns are, too, but Taeil doesn’t spare a minute for pity, it all comes as relief. 

Well, relief isn’t the right word. They’re officially fucked.

 

Taeil hates the smell of gunpowder, rust, of wax slipping down candles, red wine and extra delicate bars of soap(beeswax formula) for the delivate sing he has.    
But he puts up with the smell of the gun just this once, as Johnny lies on the sofa staring at the ceiling like it can make him forget. He bite s through bandages to his now out-of-place finger joints, matted hair just about everywhere, completely blank look on his face. Taeil knows better; it’s never that easy.   
The body lies in the bathtub, a yellowed sort you see beautiful long-haired women bathe in in old movies. Yuta himself said Hansol was even better than that between choked sobs, but it got drowned out by the water washing the blood down the drain. No  one seemed bothred enough to lock Taeil back up, it wasn’t a nice break but a break nonetheless.   
Over the course of the day, he starts to think that maybe needing to scream has nothing to do with the room.

At least Johnny’s alive, though withdrawn, he’s said a few words to Taeil(“see? Was that so hard?” he said to cheer him up, but it was a failed attempt)  and now he’s downstairs cooking dinner.   
Taeyong’s the one who puts him back in the room this time, but he can hear shouting through the floor. It’s distracting him from his book- only 23 pages left and Taeil guesses  who the killer is- so he goes under the covers again, paranoid to fuck.

 

He’s been drifting in and out of sleep all night,  it’s chronic imsomnia, always an issue. His mother would force mixtures of violet pills and milk on him to get him to bed properly when he was young. He still can’t stand the taste of violet- those rolls of hard candy his  uncle brings over that manage to taste like a colour. He can’t  _ stand _ it.

As Taeil rolls over under the covers, he realises he has a visitor.

 

“Johnny?” he could call out hopefully, but he’s always been the type to put his head in the sand when it comes to things like this. In this scenario, the sand is his duvet.   
And there’s no light in the room- there never is. Pitch fucking black. He hears rustling and wonders if it could be Johnny or-

“You’re awake,” a flick of a white lighter sends sparks out that highlight the figure just by the door. He’s holding it in his left hand, the flame comes muted but it’s enough to give the dagger an orange tint, enough to show the outlines of his black hair, enough to see the smile.

“Ten,” Taeil breathes, clutching the sheets hard.

“Listen,” ten starts, voice needlessly low. He stops walking only when he reaches the edge of the bed. “The guards will come, won’t they? It’s awfully dangerous… I keep telling Johnny that we should kill you before you get us killed, it’s nothing personal… or it is. For me at least. Forgive my rambling for now, I have a  _ lot _ on my mind.” he sighs, it comes out frustrated as he runs a hand through his hair. Taeil gulps  _ hard  _ and scrambles up but he feels no less vunerable than he did before.

“I’m just telling you this because you fucking deserve to know the damage you caused. Yknow’, I don’t want to get mistaken for a psycho, god why do I care so much? But… and this’ll make you happy… Johnny didn’t want to kill you, he literally wouldn’t listen. I bet that makes you feel great, right? Right?” Ten says, livelier than Taeil’s ever seen him. There’s no response besides physical ones, like how his body goes cold with ever word out of Ten’s mouth or the more-noticeable-than-usual pit in his stomach. He feels like if he comes to contact with the slightest force he’ll shatter like the stained glass windows he’s used to noticing dried blood on. For a flash Ten looks like someone else, then it’s gone as briefly as it showed.

“Your family fucked me up, you know that? Everyone fucking hates them. Not one fucking person likes you, not one fucking person thinks you’re great or powerful or whatever, you’ve just been cooped up in that palace for years, living like the most important person alive. Have you even been into the town?”

_ Barely, _ is the honest answer and a stupid thing to say.

“You know, I hate you so much, but that’s not why I’m going to… what am I saying? I can’t spoil the surprise so soon,” and Ten’s not even smiling anymore, he’s all glumness and sadness and eyes that flicker in synch with his lighter. He’s killed before, definitely, but it’s more terrifying now as Taeil can see empathy in his eyes, but it’s never been for him.

“Jaehyun’s only 18. Did he tell you that? He’s barely an adult and here he is, putting his life on the line because your parents are so shit. You know, we’ll have to leave after this. Taeil, this is my  _ home. _ I  _ live _ here. It’s a shit heap, right? So I tried to make it better with stupid cheery paint and then Johnny moved in too and look what we have to do! The slums, Taeil, the slums your parents refuse to clean up, but it’s not just the dirty water and all that bullshit.”

He pauses now, taking a shaky breath, voice just a bit raspy as he continues on.

“I never got to go to school, my older brother couldn’t pay. You don’t know what that’s like, do you? Huh? Taeyong had to teach me how to read because no one else fucking knew how, and now that’s all I do, that’s why I have hundreds of books, just to teach myself how to fucking read. That’s pretty pathetic, right?” he’s laughing now, dryly, it’s not even sadistic like you’d expect from the way he carries himself and that’s what scares Taeil the most. 

“It’s one battleground after another, isn’t it? First my dad back in Bangkok- then I come here and find out your father orders public executions a block away from where I live. I don’t know why everyones so scared of the guards in this damn house, we’re all pretty used to their presence by now, fucking watching our every move, if someone steps out of line they point their guns and shoot- but you should know that, seeing as it’s your family!”

And he’s shouting now and Taeil can’t even  _ hear  _ anything but his father, anything but his angry voice, anything, anything.

“So I’m not doing this because I fucking despise you, and while I do, it’s for my stupid friends. You know, they refuse to kill you, but it’s either you or them. If we get rid of you then… then… then we’ll be safer, not even safe, see how over the limits I am? So don’t look at this out of spite. You hate me, I bet, but just understand I’m not so immature I’d kill someone just because they fucking ruined my life. This isn’t about me. It’s not about you. It’s about  _ them,  _ Taeil,  _ them,” _ he’s panting, Taeil can hear the blade being pulled out and- oh god, he might just throw up. He might just-

He feels cool metal on his neck, not pressing down hard enough to sting, in a way it’s surreal. The danger’s all there but he just can’t bring himself to feel anything but the coldness, anything but the hands of his father-

Oh god, can Ten just do it already? Oh god oh god-

The coolness is gone, but not replaced by searing pain, his skin knicks a bit on the edge as the blade shakes. It’s just enough to draw blood, then all the pressure disappears. The lighter flicks off but the last thing Taeil gets to see of Ten is a pained face.

“God, I can’t even do this. How weak am I?”

Taeil barely hears the latch sliding open, but in a sixteenth of a second, it’s all that’s on his mind.

He can recognise the person by the footsteps alone and that scares him, he can recognise the person by the way Ten makes a sad noise and throws himself into their arms. Somewhere in between, the lightswitch is hit, there’s Johnny standing in his underwear so you can see all the scars on his back. It seems like Taeil’s not so different after all.

“What happened? I heard shouting,” he’s saying gently, stroking Ten’s back and Taeil’s just  _ so happy  _ to be alive that he thinks the sound of Johnny’s voice is just about the best thing he’s ever heard. Terrifying, he knows.

But his heart is pounding and his neck is bleeding and he rolls over and vomits from the intensity of it all.

“Oh god,” he mumbles, its the first thing he’s managed to say since that first flicker of flame and it almost wastes all of his remaining energy. 

Johnny hums in disaproval. “Ten, what did you do?” he says, though Ten’s crying, getting Johnny’s shoulder all wet as he buries his face deeper into it. 

“I couldn’t kill him,” ten says between choked tears. It’s physically painful to listen to at this point, so unnatural and highpitched that Taeil has half a mind to bury himself under the sheets again but instead he accidently trips as he stands up and away from the puke.

“You’re not a killer, Ten,” Johnny’s saying, rubbing circles in his back. They seem to be completely unaware of Taeil’s presence as he goes to the desk and drinks the half-empty glass of soda there. It makes his throat burn but he’ll  _ live. _

“But what about-”

“That wasn’t your fault. Anyway,” Johnny coughs and pulls away from Ten. “Go rest, I’ll deal with this.”

Ten nods and walks out of the room, shoulders slumped. He doesn’t look defeated. He looks broken in a way that makes Taeil’s gut wrench like he’s the same way.

Johnny turns to him, like the most infuriating person alive, smiles pitifully. “Are you okay?” 

Taeil momentarily can’t respond, but when he does, his voice is shamefully cracked, he feels a lump of glass blocking his airways and has to remind himself it’s not even real. “Not especially, no,” he says, still unable to lose the snarkiness. It’s his chemical makeup, he supposes, and there’s nothing to be done about it.

And Johnny, that causes Taeil the most pain out of the lot- all things considered, puts an arm around Taeil’s shoulder and gestures for him to stand up. “Come on. You can’t sleep in here.”

The implications are there. Taeil chooses to ignore them.

Johnny’s still got his heavy arm around Taeil’s shoulder when they reach the kitchen. About time to be honest- Taeil stumbled so much on those fucking stairs that the only reason he didn’t trip was because he  _ knew  _ Johnny would carry him if he did.    
He’s being handed a glass of water, no soda, standing there like Johnny isn’t only in his underwear. Taeil looks, yeah he does, who wouldn’t if they got the chance? 

“Drink it slowly,” Johnny says, eyeing Taeil like he’s genuinely concerned. Sometimes Taeil thinks he might be, or he might not hate as much as he says, that’s when Taeil knows he’s been thinking too hard about the whole thing.

“I saw my father,” Taeil says carelessly. He sips at the water and looks out the window, half expecting to see a guard in a moonlit royal uniform. “When Ten was shouting at me.”

“I’m sorry about him, he’s such a state.”

“It’s alright. He told me how much you all suffer because of me _.  _ I’d be more sorry about that.”

“It’s not because of you,” Johnny sighs. “How stupid are you?”

“You said-”

“Forget what I said, it’s not because of you. Didn’t I already apologise for that?”

“You did,” Taeil admits, ignoring the hand Johnny puts on his shoulder.

“If you want to know why I  _ really _ hate you it’s because of your hatred for toast.”

Taeil rolls his eyes. “I hate you too, you know that?” 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> 1- I struggled a lot while writing this and I actually dropped it in february, though comments motivate me, so I'll be way more likely to update with those <3  
> 2- Next chapter is the final one. Maybe Johnny's perspective?  
> 4- Taeil actually thinks that Johnny's red shoes are super cute  
> 3- Thank you all for reading!! Hope you liked it !  
> 5- Was just editting this final note and I realised I put the number 4 before 3  
> 6- I post writing updates on my twitter @11dishwashers if anyone wants to see those !!


End file.
